I have stolen the heart out of your chest. It beat

on my bed for days, where I let it run itself

out. It wasn’t red, but brown, turning deeper so

as it lay and rot. I stole the heart; I think, how cliché,

how Poe, how macabre. How odd it looks,

so like a river outside of its home

between the lungs. (Ah, skin

you keep our organs in.) I want to scribble its letters,

slip them under the bedroom door. I no longer care

to visit, but what to write, “So sorry

I killed you dead”? You didn’t think

I could cause such pain—my face like a doll’s, my hair

so fine, my elegant hands—but I tell you, I reached

in. I reached right in, and my boat sailed over the edge,

slicing us a fleeting wake.